


no happy ending in sight for us

by DrowningInStarlight



Category: Rusty Quill Gaming (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Episode Tag, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Party Tensions, Someone help my wife, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 08:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19849669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowningInStarlight/pseuds/DrowningInStarlight
Summary: Azu is starting to think no one is going to make it out of this.





	no happy ending in sight for us

**Author's Note:**

> HE'S BACK! HE'S BACK! AZU IS GETTING SOME INCREDIBLE/WORRYING CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT! I'M NOT OKAY!
> 
> title from no happy ending by the mechanisms.

The drugs must have still been working on Hamid, because after a little while he fell asleep again. Zolf had gone (to fetch the things Hamid asked for? Azu wasn't sure) but Hamid was still mid-rant about him, pacing the cell. 

"--but _what_ is he doing here?" he said, throwing his hands up and coming to sit down next to Azu, where she was slumped against the wall. " _Working for Wilde,_ he says, but they always hated each other, Azu, always! I just don't... don't understand..." He leant against Azu's side, and she moved to accommodate him wordlessly, letting him lie in her lap. "Can't believe he's back... I think I might be... falling asleep again?" 

"Go to sleep, Hamid," she said quietly. "It doesn't look like we're getting out of here any time soon." 

Hamid was asleep before she'd finished her sentence. She sighed, and bundled him into her arms so he wasn't on the cold stone floor. It was easy to forget exactly how small Hamid was sometimes. He always seemed to capture the attention in any room, fiery and colourful; but now he was in a drugged sleep on the floor of a prison cell, Azu couldn't forget it. 

She knew what her role in the party was, and she knew that she'd failed. Grizzop and Sasha were lost, and whatever Hamid said, she knew they weren't getting them back. She was supposed to be the protector. She'd failed, and they'd come back to a world neither of them understood any more. 

She couldn't stop thinking: the last time she'd held someone unconscious in her arms like this, it was Sasha in the ruins of Ancient Rome. And now, less than a week later, she only had Hamid left. She couldn't stop thinking: how much more can I lose? She held Hamid a little closer.

It took her a moment to see Zolf lurking in the shadows, staring at them with a haunted expression. When he saw her looking at him, he startled into motion, brusquely unlocking a little hatch and shoving the tray he was carrying into the cell, not acknowledging that she'd caught him staring. He struck her as a man who'd left shame behind a long time ago.

Once he'd deposited the tray, he locked the hatch up tightly and took a step away from the cell. He didn't leave, though, just standing with his hands in his pockets, regarding Azu with a steady gaze. Ignoring the tray, she carefully put Hamid down in the corner, and came to stand on the other side of the bars, looking right back at him. 

So this was Zolf Smith, dwarven cleric of Poseidon-- Well. Azu wasn't so sure that last bit was true any more. She didn't recognise the signs on his breastplate, and that worried her. The cults had been the one thing that were constant in her life, a fixed point, but now she'd skipped a year and a half and even that certainty had been taken from her. She'd heard about Zolf, of course, in Hamid and Sasha's stories; but there'd been one constant in every tale they'd tell, too, and she didn't like it. 

"You left them," she accused. The dark made it hard to tell, but she thought he winced. The part of her that was desperately, furiously angry thought _good._

"Yeah," he said levelly. "I did." 

"They needed you." 

Zolf didn't answer, just glanced down at Hamid, still sleeping, before looking away. He'd left behind shame, maybe, but Azu knew you could never escape guilt. "They didn't. Wanted me, perhaps, but they were better off without me." 

"I don't believe for a second that running away and leaving Hamid and Sasha without anyone to keep an eye on them was better for them," Azu said. 

Zolf laughed bitterly. "You understand that I'm in no way convinced I'm even having a conversation with a real person right now? I've seen this too many times to trust like that." 

"There's nothing I can do to convince you, is there?" Azu said, tiredly. This strange, harsh world had left her behind, she just wanted... she just wanted to go _home._ But she wasn't stupid. She knew there was no going back to the world she'd loved, so she took a breath and faced Zolf Smith. 

He shrugged. "You can wait seven days." 

"We don't have _time_ for that!" 

"I _know_ ," Zolf said. "But there's never enough time for anything. Welcome to the new world." 

"Just the same as the old world," Azu said under her breath. A flicker of a wry smile passed across Zolf's lips, quickly suppressed. 

"Well, I'm sure that you can understand why I don't trust _you_ , either," Azu said. "Just know, Hamid's all I have left here, and if you hurt him, _at all_ , it won't matter whether you think I'm a zombie or not." 

"That a threat?" 

"Yes." 

Zolf nodded slightly. "If you're who you say you are, then hurting Hamid is not something I'm going to do. If you're lying to me..." 

He didn't finished the sentence, but his green eyes had the look of someone who'd seen far, far too much.

"Maybe it doesn't mean much any more," Azu said, "But I give you my word as a paladin of Aphrodite that I'm telling you the truth. It's all I have to offer you." Her gaze turned defiant, as she clung to the one thing that had ever made sense to her. "It's all I _am_." 

There was something like sympathy in Zolf's face as he said "That doesn't mean anything nowadays. It might be time to reinvent yourself, Azu. Trust me on that one." 

He left without another word. 

In another world, Azu was sure she'd have liked Zolf Smith. But this was the brave new world (just as broken as the old world) and she was so tired. There wasn't any time left, not for her, not for anyone. 

So Azu breathed in, breathed out, and tightened her grip on her axe. She couldn't stop thinking: this is what I'm going to die for.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr @drowninginstarlights


End file.
